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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29044320">Lifetimes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat/pseuds/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat'>Ivillpunchyouinthethroat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Byakuya does some observing, F/M, ambiguous timeline</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:55:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,029</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29044320</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat/pseuds/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Byakuya sees the way Ichigo Kurosaki looks at Rukia and it is not hard to read the heartbreak in every liquid glance of his eyes.</p><p>It is well masked most of the time, hidden behind a veneer of apathy and bickering and insults but Byakuya sees it, how could he not.</p><p>He had looked at Hisana like that, once upon a lifetime.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>78</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lifetimes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I stopped keeping up with Bleach right around the end of Aizen/Hueco Mundo arc so idk where this would take place exactly.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Byakuya sees the way Ichigo Kurosaki looks at Rukia and it is not hard to read the heartbreak in every liquid glance of his eyes.</p><p>It is well masked most of the time, hidden behind a veneer of apathy and bickering and insults but Byakuya sees it, how could he not.</p><p>He had looked at Hisana like that, once upon a lifetime.</p><p>And Rukia looks at the human with the same fondness that Hisana had looked at <em>him</em>, that mixture of genuine affection and genuine remorse, a warring of such separate emotions that had often plagued his wife’s kind eyes. It had only been when Hisana had apologized for not being able to return his love that the look in her eyes had changed. It was only as his wife had lain in her deathbed that Byakuya had thought,</p><p>
  <em>Yes, she could have grown to love me. </em>
</p><p>But that was a different story, a different lifetime.</p><p>Yet in <em>this </em>lifetime, where the focus was not Byakuya or Hisana, but Hisana’s <em>sister</em>, it seemed that history was poised to repeat itself in the cruelest way possible.</p><p>Rukia and Ichigo where bound together, linked by red strings of fate across separate worlds of life and death. Bound by wounds that did not bleed but that hurt more than any physical pain ever could, wounds that they had, somehow, managed to heal for one another.</p><p>Since their first meeting, when Rukia had plunged her sword into Kurosaki’s heart and poured her very being into him, their souls had become intertwined; mixing together like watercolor on paper, colors reaching for each other, blending to the point of being inseparable, making instead a new whole.</p><p>Rukia cared too much for Kurosaki to let him go, to push him away, even when she no doubt knew that it would be for the best. And Kurosaki, this human who had protected Rukia when Byakuya himself could not, who had defied all of Soul Society for her, would not have let something so simple as his own heartbreak keep him away.</p><p>So there they stayed, in a limbo of want and remorse, held together through a bond of friendship that was strong enough to withstand it all, no matter how much it hurt the both of them. </p><p>And then one day, the way Rukia looks at him changes.</p><p>It’s subtle, this change, enough that it takes even Byakuya, so accustomed to <em>looking,</em> by surprise.</p><p>It is a sedate evening spent at the manor, with Kurosaki visiting from the human world, as he is wont to do. Byakuya has left them to their own devices, as he is also wont to do, and it is largely coincidence the he happens to be rounding a corner on the outside walkway when he sees them.</p><p>They are sat out in the garden, the setting sun stretching their shadows long behind them. A breeze ruffles their uniforms, dark cloth rustling against the grass. Kurosaki looks ahead but Rukia looks at him and amid her dancing black hair, in the violet depths of her eyes—</p><p>Oh, Byakuya thinks.</p><p>There is a softness in Rukia’s gaze as she looks at Kurosaki, an emotion that Byakuya has not seen before—</p><p>No, that is not quite right.</p><p>It is a look that Byakuya <em>has</em> seen before, that same fondness she has always looked at Kurosaki with, but it seems that it has  grown slowly—ever so slowly—as to escape Byakuya’s notice until it has changed so much it is almost unrecognizable.</p><p>And it is only <em>now, </em>with the fiery orange red of sunset clashing with the ice of Rukia’s eyes that Byakuya can see just how much it has truly changed.</p><p>Rukia looks up at Kurosaki and the look in her eyes is a blinding thing, so bright and powerful that it makes the fondness Byakuya had seen before pale in comparison.</p><p>Byakuya feels something clench at his chest, because for a moment, Rukia looks so much like Hisana that it <em>hurts.</em></p><p>He wonders if Hisana could have ever grown to look at him like <em>that—</em></p><p>But then Kurosaki is turning and Byakuya is pulled away from his memories.</p><p>Kurosaki looks down at her and Byakuya half expects Rukia to wipe the look off her face, to turn away and offer the sharp edge of an insult in much the same way Kurosaki would have done if their positions were reversed.</p><p>But Kurosaki looks down and Rukia does not turn and the look in her eyes does not change, if anything it strengthens, is helped by the faint curling at the corners of her mouth.</p><p>Byakuya does not believe that Kurosaki has seen Rukia look at him in this way before because he is sure that if Kurosaki had, Byakuya would have <em>known</em>. In the same way that he has known this dance of a friendship kept carefully close to hearts gone raw at the proximity.</p><p>He wonders what Kurosaki will do then, if he will be as shocked as Byakuya himself is.</p><p>But Kurosaki does not gape, does not flounder, does not so much as blink in surprise.</p><p>No, his features settle into a matching easy warmth, gaze blurring into that soft liquid hazel that he’s always looked at Rukia with. It’s not quite as if Kurosaki had been expecting this, no, it’s as if he’s been waiting for it. For this exact moment when Rukia finally let the look in her eyes change.</p><p><em>Oh</em>, Byakuya thinks.</p><p>They look at each other and no other words are said but Byakuya knows that they know that something has shifted, that what they have is more than friendship now and that it no longer burns in its intensity but suffuses mellow and warm instead.</p><p>Byakuya turns on his heel and leaves quietly, not so much as a rustle of his haori to betray his presence.</p><p>With his sister and her human safely out of eyesight he allows himself a rare moment of impropriety.</p><p>He indulges in a smile. A small one.</p><p>A lifetime they might have been poised to repeat but Byakuya is no longer concerned, for there is no longer heartbreak in their eyes.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I haven't really been deep in the Bleach fandom since like 2014 but Ichiruki was my first otp and continues to be a ship I hold <em>very</em> dear to my heart, it was literally what inspired me to start writing fic in the first place.</p><p>Feel free to leave your thoughts :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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